Spirit Gate

by Kate Elliott

  “It may be that fortune favors us today,” Anji went on. He pointed. “There’s a caravan gathering in Sarida’s caravan market. A large one. Let’s hope it’s traveling north toward the Hundred, and not south back into the heart of the empire.” He conferred with Chief Tuvi, Tohon, and a pair of older men. The three women were directed to change into Qin clothing. Behind a blanket, they did so. When they emerged, they had tucked their hair tightly away under cloth bindings. Tuvi gave the signal to move. Mai pulled an end of cloth to cover her mouth and nose, as against dust, with only her beautiful eyes exposed.

  Tohon move up alongside to Shai. “You stay with me, lad.”

  They rode on.

  “EMPIRE TOWNS HAVE walls, but they are not fortresses,” Tohon explained as they followed in the dust of the main troop, riding rear guard with six tailmen behind them to sound the warning should the emperor’s red hounds catch up. The busier Tohon was scanning the landscape to either side, the likelier he was to get to talking. “They’re not built to repel an army. We hit one once. That was many years ago, before the first treaty was signed between them and us, the one that sent the captain’s mother to the Sirniakan court to become the emperor’s concubine. I was just a groom, not yet old enough to ride as a tailman.”

  “I thought the new treaty with this new emperor made the Sirniakans and the Qin allies. Why did they need that, then? If they were allies before?”

  “There was trouble, fighting and raids, along the border after the var’s sister—that is, the captain’s mother—lost favor in the imperial household. Now there’s this new treaty.”

  “Then are they building walls in case of war?”

  “No. They build walls because their god tells them to. He likes things orderly. Some things inside, some things outside, these things here and those things there. All I know is, never talk to one of their priests. They’ll chop off your head just for a wrong word. And, never put a foot into their temple grounds. They’ll do worse.”

  “What can they do worse than chop off your head?”

  Tohon chuckled. “Tss! You’re young!”

  “What do their priests look like, so I’ll know not to talk to one?”

  “I don’t know. I never saw one.”

  The hillsides were covered with terraces. Men moved barefoot through those small plots, but the work they stooped to in those wet fields made little sense to Shai, who had grown up among the wood shavings and pastureland of his ancestors’ holdings. Tohon seemed to take it in with the same interest he would take in the flights of birds and the venture of animals through the grass: only that which might threaten him interested him.

  The road came down onto the valley floor among fenced pastures and orchards in strict ranks. They rode in and out of morning shade. Four towers could be seen in the distance, though trees hid the rest of Sarida. Clouds had piled up along the northern horizon, hiding the mountains. Above them, the sky was clear, and the sun growing hot. Bees buzzed where flowers bloomed in parallel rows beyond the roadside paths. A little girl wearing a long blue dress and a gold apron, with her hair tied up in a gold scarf, stood among the golden flowers with a mass of flowers heaped in her arms. She stared as they passed. A man wearing a leather apron and a dirty tunic knelt beside a wheelbarrow half filled with fruit. He shouted at the girl. Hastily, she dropped to her knees and bent her head. A bird sang a five-note song; red wings flashed in the trees. Tohon scratched his nose, sniffing as if he smelled smoke.

  Where the road curved past a bristling hedge, they broke free of the ranks of orchard to find themselves right up against the outlying districts of Sarida. Fenced gardens growing herbs, vegetables, or flowers competed for space with stinking tanning yards and the beaten ground around smoking kilns. Off to the right Shai saw a spectacular lumberyard, all kinds and sizes of stacked logs, but Tohon slapped him on the elbow to get his attention as they rode up to the outskirts of the outermost district: the caravan market, where merchants and strangers were permitted to bide.

  The caravan market had overflowed its corral-like wall, and the town guards were too busy trying to keep order to prevent the entry of a troop of soldiers bearing a palace warrant. Many wagons had gathered on the field beyond the corral. Drovers and servants loitered there, holding just about anything over their heads to get some shade as the sun rose toward the zenith. Qin grooms held the main herd tightly grouped out beyond the low walls, but the rest of the troop pushed in past the gates to an open plot of ground where the men who ran the market took their tolls and taxes. As Shai rode in at the rear, beside Tohon, local men gave way: porters bearing sacks of meal or carters pushing barrels that smelled of oil; slaves clad in little more than a loincloth, with scars lacing their bare backs; merchants borne in chairs, who shouted at their bearers as they lurched to one side; a pair of dogs with ears and tails down; a pack of boys in short tunics, hair pulled back into braided horsetails, who slunk away after the dogs.

  The men who ran the market conducted their business on a raised plank deck sheltered by a plank roof. Anji rode right up onto that deck, the hooves of his horse a hollow thunder on the wood. He had his whip in his hand, but no sword. The market officials rose, outraged, but in the face of about two hundred armed and dangerous men, they did not speak hard words. Many glanced elsewhere, as if seeking reinforcements, someone else to draw the soldiers’ attention. Mai was lost among the centermost knot of the troop, while the rest of the riders had fanned out to cover the open ground. Shai pushed forward with Tohon.

  “Is there a caravan headed north today?” Anji’s voice carried easily. “We’ve come with special instructions from Dalilasah, from the Compassionate Magistrate of the Fourth Army, and the Eleventh Warden of the Eighth Pack out of the Glorious Red Hounds. We are to ride north and clear the North Road and the pass of the recent infestation of robbers and heretics.”

  “We’ve heard no such tales, of robbers and heretics!” objected one of the local officials. The man blanched as Anji turned a stony gaze on him and drew the whip through the fingers of his opposite hand as tenderly as he might caress the hair of a woman.

  “Surely you have not heard any idle talk of heretics,” said Anji in a voice that made every man there cringe. Other officials stepped away from the fool who had spoken up. “We do not speak of such things openly, except in deadly times, such as these. Heresy is a plague that kills swiftly. Be wary. Be alert. Meanwhile, I ride with a special dispensation, a warrant from the palace. We leave at midday, after we’ve watered our horses. Any caravan master looking for protection may journey with us. But they must make ready at once. We do not wait.”

  It seemed unlikely to Shai that any merchant would ask for the protection of such a threatening crew. No one spoke up, but a whisper passed through the assembly. At the verge, the crowd melted away in the manner of boys and dogs.

  Anji turned his men aside. They set to the task of watering the horses and stealing—they called it commandeering—grain, portable foodstuffs, da, and terig leaf from the storehouses. They provisioned themselves with a dispatch that Shai admired, considering how hungry he was. He himself pilfered sacks of oranges and dates, and slung a pair of these sacks over the withers of his own horse, with the other sacks over a spare pony. Jagi and Pil made fun of him; they didn’t know what dates were, and the oranges, they said, would be mashed to pulp after one day on the road.

  As the sun kissed the zenith, the troop assembled outside the gates of the caravan market. Astoundingly, a long line of wagons, slaves bound by rope, outriders, and peddlers pushing handcarts waited in marching order. The caravan master presented a hastily drawn-up manifest of merchants and goods to Captain Anji. They were ready to go, and eager, it seemed, to travel under the protection of such a menacing company.

  “I can’t believe they’re agreeing to the captain’s terms, just like that,” muttered Shai to Tohon. “Aren’t they suspicious? They have no idea if he’s really what he claims to be.”

  Tohon chuckled. “A piece of
advice, lad. When you talk, people hear that you don’t understand what you see. Best to keep your eyes open, and your mouth closed. Look at them. They’re scared. Fear tramples prudence. The captain tells them to obey, and they want to believe that if they obey they’ll be safe, so they obey.” He grinned in the friendliest manner possible, twisting the wispy strands at his chin that were all he had of a beard. That smile almost took the sting out of the words. “Are you any different?”

  Chief Tuvi lifted the banner that signaled departure. Shouts and cries rose from among the merchants and wagon drivers. The vanguard pushed out, and the front of the caravan lurched after them as men and slaves all along the line braced themselves, getting ready to move.

  North, to the Hundred. There, surely, they would find a safe haven.

  19

  “I’m sure we’re not yet facing the worst,” said Peddo with a rare look of disgust.

  “That’s what you said yesterday.”

  Joss had climbed up a stunted pine tree, scraping his hands in the process, and now angled his body out over the edge of the drop-off. Yes, indeed, the pack of men who had started shooting arrows at the two reeves yesterday at dusk had tracked them down and assembled at the base of the rock on which Peddo and Joss and their eagles had taken refuge for the night. The company below had rope, axes, and plenty of arrows. They had torches and, here in the tail end of the dry season, more than enough parched vegetation to get a conflagration going.

  “I said it yesterday,” said Peddo. “And I was right, wasn’t I? But I was only thinking of what the Commander said—when was that? The hells! That was almost a year ago. Do you remember it? We had to do that escort duty along the roads for the first time, and then the town of River’s Bend was burned down. ‘Not yet facing the worst.’ Truer words were never spoken.”

  Joss shinnied back, scraping his hands again on the bark, and jumped down beside Peddo. “Good thing they didn’t find us while it was still night, or we’d be smoked with no way to fly out. Anyway, you weren’t at that meeting. That was for legates only. How do you know she said that?”

  Peddo had lost weight over the course of the Year of the Silver Fox. He looked hunted, harried, and worn, but when he grinned, you just had to grin with him. “I got you drunk and you spilled every word said in the meeting.”

  “You didn’t get me drunk.”

  “That’s true. You talked without being drunk. It must be part of your charm. Not that I can see it, mind you.”

  The first soft tendrils of smoke rose on the updrafts swirling around the huge rock formation. Peddo shaded his eyes and scanned the heavens, east against the rising sun, north, west, and south, but neither raptor—perched well away from each other at opposite ends of the highest spur—had seen anything in the hard blue sky, so that meant no reeves from Iron Hall could possibly be within human sight.

  “What do you think?” Peddo asked more softly. “Those Iron Hall reeves swore to meet us near this landmark. Think they ran into an accident? I fear me—” He hesitated, rubbing his left shoulder where he’d taken an arrow wound two months ago. Glancing toward the edge, he did not attempt to look over at their assailants. “I fear me that they might have.”

  “Best move out, and fly upland. See if we can spot them, or they us.”

  “How far?”

  Joss shrugged. “All the way to Iron Hall, if we must.”

  “Eagles are getting touchy. We might be attacked by one of our own for flying into their territory.”

  “We have to try. Anyway, that accident—four months ago, was it?—with that Copper Hall eagle was completely unexpected. That’s the first time in years one eagle has attacked another for flying through its territory. Everyone—reeve and eagle alike—we’re all agitated. We have to try, Peddo. We haven’t had a messenger out of Iron Hall for a month.”

  And they’d been too overwhelmed to send a messenger of their own, just to trade reports, get up to date on the worsening situation across Haldia and the lowlands. Not enough reeves, and far too much violence.

  We’re helpless, but we have to try.

  Below, enough brush had caught that the sound of fire crackling could be easily heard. The two raptors were getting anxious. Scar yelped. Jabi shifted restlessly, and as soon as Peddo fastened into the harness, the eagle thrust upward, beating hard. Arrows spat up from the ground below. Joss unhooded Scar, but then stepped away to the opposite side of the rock, to the lip where it tumbled straight down. He scanned the landscape, splendid to survey but pitted with traps for the unwary eagle: copses in which folk could hide, gulches into which a man could duck, clearings in which archers could raise their bows, sight, and loose, as they were doing now, knowing they had the shelter of trees nearby. There were many more men out there than he had first imagined. He sucked in smoke, coughed, but held his place, watching as arrows sped up from the ground in the wake of Jabi’s flight. Jabi had served through three reeves; he was smart enough to gauge his distance, and keep clear, but those men would keep shooting and it was obvious to Joss that there were at least a hundred men scattered within eyeshot of the outcropping.

  Scar kekked. Joss spun just as a scrape and rattle of stone betrayed the man scrambling up and over onto the height. Some damn fool had climbed, risking everything for the chance to kill a reeve.

  Scar was a big bird. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t move fast.

  The man shrieked, seeing that massive form as it struck. He stumbled backward. Scar’s foremost talons raked over the thigh, hung in the flesh. Then, as the man slipped, flailing, into the gulf of air, the flesh ripped free, and he was gone over the edge, screaming.

  “The hells!” swore Joss.

  He heard the crash of the body as it smashed into rock and rolled over dry brush, and then a shout from wherever the fallen man had come to rest. A yammer rose from the men below like that of hungry dogs circling in for the kill. It was definitely time to go.

  Scar was furious, head lowered, feathers raised along the back of his neck. He was twittering angrily, and although the sound seemed incongruous, coming from such a huge bird, Joss knew what it meant: A blooded eagle who had lost his prey was a bad-tempered eagle, roused and dangerous.

  But the smoke was getting thicker. Others would climb, or were climbing. He had to act. He put the bone whistle to his lips, and blew the command meant to rouse any eagle to return to its reeve.

  Scar lifted his head and opened his wings. Joss fastened into the harness. Up! Arrows rose, like rain falling upward, sheets of them, but Scar had grabbed an updraft with the first beat of his wings and kept rising, out of range. Far above, Jabi circled. Below, men scattered into hiding places, making it impossible to get an estimate of their numbers. Scar spiraled up on a thermal. Below, the fire began to spread. Joss and Peddo, keeping their distance, traded flag signals, then flew north in parallel tracks, within human visual range of each other. Gliding and spiraling, gliding and spiraling, the effortless flight of the healthy eagle. For a long time they could see black smoke from the fire, spreading as the blaze got out of control. No doubt, thought Joss sourly, the men who had started it would flee with no concern for what damage the fire would cause. But then, the Year of the Silver Fox had lived up to its worst characteristics: a contentious, difficult, dangerous year colored by ashes and gloom and death, one setback after the next.

  As the day rose, they passed over empty tracks and roadways, flew above villages and hamlets where folk turned their fields or trimmed their trees and field shrubs to ready them for the rains due to arrive next month, after the turn of the year. What folk they saw who were out or abroad stuck close by the often pathetic palisades thrown up around every habitation; in many cases, people were raising or repairing walls.

  They’d been aloft most of the morning when Jabi screamed an alert. Scar answered him. Both sets of raptor eyes fixed on a sight beyond human range. Soon enough Joss—and Peddo—saw it, too: another eagle and its reeve, circling high, riding a thermal but not really goin
g anywhere. Plumes of smoke cut up from the land. Had they somehow swung around and were returning to the outcropping they’d started from? Or, the hells, was this a new conflagration?

  They had flown well north into the uplands of Haldia. The River Istri, no larger than a stand of blue-green ribbon, snaked along the ground off to the west. The foothills of Heaven’s Ridge swept the north and northwest; the upland plains to the east were lost in heat haze, although at this height the high plateau could be guessed, even at a distance of tens of mey, by the yellow shimmer smearing the eastern horizon. Just a few mey ahead lay the city of High Haldia, one of the Thirteen Bannered Cities in the Hundred. And it was the city, surely, that the smoke surrounded. As they flew closer, he caught sight of a second eagle, then counted four. Ten! More like vultures than eagles, circling as if waiting for the death throes to cease.

  Whenever Scar shifted his wings, the movement of the raptor’s breast muscles bunched and eased against Joss’s back. After so many years, Joss could anticipate the changes. The muscles tensed, Scar dipped, then pulled up; Joss scanned the ground to see what Scar had seen and brought to his notice.

  Files of men, everywhere.

  Sometimes, when you were on patrol, the sights you observed hanging in harness at the breast of your eagle seemed absurd, unreal, a tale unfolding in the movements of tiny carved toys on a rumpled blanket. A mob was converging on High Haldia, whose attendant villages and fields were abandoned and whose gates were shut. Ants might swarm toward a nest of sweets in this same manner. Men were coming from all directions, grouped in companies and ranked by banners to mark their leaders and cadres. Every village claimed a rough and ready militia of thirty-six able adults; every town boasted a militia and guard of one hundred and eight who would run to serve if needs must. Every Bannered City paid a permanent guard to patrol its walls and streets and in addition organized a militia of folk able to stand up with weapons if they were called for, a full six companies if they could manage it or more in the largest population centers like Nessumara and Toskala. But such massed armed forces had become rare in recent times, in the days of Joss’s mother and grandmothers. Even in the north, in Herelia, Iliyat, and Vess, where the ancient custom of lordship still held sway, a lord ruler could rarely afford to house and feed more than a single company of one hundred and eight.